Read the Real Madrid squad list as it stands in the last week of August and it is easy to lose a name. Seven arrivals and returns. A new manager in his second spell. A No.10 confirmed, a striker who won the opener off the bench. Somewhere underneath all of it, Rodrygo is doing rehab. He is still working his way back from an anterior cruciate ligament tear, the Rodrygo return is not expected until 2027, and he has become the most easily forgotten important player at this club.
The Real Champs argue this week that Vinícius Júnior’s form is making Los Blancos miss Rodrygo more, not less — that the Brazilian nobody is talking about was, on defensive work rate, consistency, passing and composure, the more dependable of the two. That is an argument rather than a fact, and plenty of Madridistas will want to fight it. It is also the first time this season the case has felt worth making.
What The Rodrygo Return Would Actually Give Mourinho
Rodrygo was a pillar of the sides that won the Champions League in 2021/22 and 2023/24 — the second of those taking Real Madrid’s record to fifteen European Cups. He did it, for most of that period, from a position the same report notes he likes rather less: the right, the side he was moved to so that Vinícius could own the left. He scored the goals nobody else was in position to score and produced the moments a tie needed. The Real Champs’ contention is that he was ahead of Vinícius on the unglamorous parts of the job, and the unglamorous parts are exactly what José Mourinho demands.
Our own reporting has been steadily more encouraging on that front: Rodrygo has hit every recovery milestone so far and Real Madrid are working to an early-2027 target. That is still most of a season away.
Vinícius Júnior Is Not The Problem — But He Is Why The Absence Shows
Vinícius had a strong World Cup and, per The Real Champs, was second only to Harry Kane for goals in club football across the second half of 2025/26. Those are not the numbers of a player in decline. The frustration in the stands is about something else — the sense that the level of 2023/24 has not come back, and that the parts of his game a Mourinho team leans on hardest have slipped.
Mourinho has already made that explicit. Getting Vinícius and Kylian Mbappé to press and do the defensive work has been the hardest job of his early weeks back. He also went out of his way after Espanyol to defend the winger from the treatment he gets, telling anyone listening that we are still in the era of bullying — which tells you he intends to build around him rather than beside him. Vinícius, for his part, went into the opener with his own stated aim of winning the Bernabéu back.
A Squad Built Without Him
The uncomfortable part is that Real Madrid have spent an entire window constructing an attack that does not include Rodrygo. Yan Diomande arrived from RB Leipzig. Carlos Espí came in from Levante and won the LaLiga opener on debut. Endrick is back from his loan at Lyon. Franco Mastantuono and Brahim Díaz are both still here. And Madrid Universal reported this week that the club are not planning further signings at all unless an unexpected exit opens a space on the roster. By the time Rodrygo is fit, the queue in front of him will be longer than the one he left behind.
So the name stays easy to forget, and that is the point. This is not a case for dropping, selling or blaming Vinícius Júnior; he is still the most dangerous player Los Blancos have on that flank, and a trophyless 2025/26 was not his doing alone. It is a case that the balance Rodrygo quietly provided has not been replaced, and that Real Madrid have a whole season to get through before they can even begin to miss him less. In August, early 2027 is a very long way away.
